List speaks volumes for bottom dollar

If you judge Australians by the books they read (apart from all the Harry Potters), you would suspect we are a nation of sex-crazed anti-American conspiracy theorists with a penchant for bottoms.

That pattern emerges in a sales chart for the 12 months to April, just produced by the Australian Publishers Association.

What we're not is a nation of readers impressed by television celebrity. The chart shows that despite huge publicity, Mike Munro's autobiography, A Pasty-Faced Nothing, sold only 25,000, the style guide by the Fab Five from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy sold 23,000, and Andrew Denton's collected interview transcripts, Enough Rope, sold 15,000.

The best-selling TV star was Jamie Durie, of Backyard Blitz and The Block, who shifted 35,000 copies of his design guide, The Outdoor Room.

But that fell behind Steve Waugh's autobiography, Never Say Die, on 45,000.

After "the", another three-letter word appears most often in the year's top 50 bestsellers' titles.

Can you spot it? Zombie Bums from Uranus, by Andy Griffiths, sold 100,000, Bum Breath, Botox and Bubble, by Karl Kruszelnicki, sold 35,000, The Day My Bum Went Psycho, by Andy Griffiths, sold 35,000, and The Bugalugs Bum Thief, Aussie Bites, by Tim Winton, sold more than 19,000.

Health expert Jennie Brand-Miller has six books in the top 50. In total, she has outperformed Australia's top cookbook author, Donna Hay, whose Modern Classics Book Two sold 60,000.

The year's bestsellers are topped by Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which sold more than 900,000 copies.

The most successful novel not written by J.K. Rowling was The Bride Stripped Bare, the memoirs of a nymphomaniac housewife by London-based Australian Nikki Gemmell, which sold 190,000.

Two diatribes about George Bush by the moviemaker Michael Moore were in the top 20: Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country?